What are politics like in your space age setting?
>>93432348Tell us first about yours. You have one, right?
>>93432348As it happens, this is one of the things I've thought about. The humans' interstellar government is built around the Federal Senate, a single-chamber legislative body where every member-state has one representative. The senate has little influence on planetary government, as it primarily acts as a body for deliberating decisions that affect the entire Federation. There are no formal political parties, but senators and the states they represent can be roughly grouped into categories based on their political ideology (similarly how we can say that some politicians are right-wing or left-wing). These ideologies are mostly about the balance between the Federal government and planetary governments, with some being in favor of a stronger central government even if it reduced the autonomy of planetary governments, while others favoring a weak central government and as much autonomy as possible. A political trend many states find worrisome is the gradual increase in the power of the faction led by Earth, which seeks to reinstate the state of things that existed before the formation of the Federation, when other planets were treated as colonies of Earth with very little autonomy and subject to heavy taxation.There's also a president, but the role is largely symbolic, having no real legislative power and mostly acting as the chairman of senate meetings.
>>93432348All backstabbing, all the time. If they have a moustache, they would twirl it while giving you a condescending grin.
>>93432466Damn, why does your green alien chic have such a big round ass?
>>93432348Why do you want to kill this board?
>>93432466The autonomists seem like the obligatory moral good guys if every single other faction favours increasing centralising power with the senate. Furthermore, Terra delenda est.
>>93432466The Seiran Star-Republic, an alien civilization allied with the humans also uses a democratic system, though it functions quite differently. They have a far more centralized government and their political system is built around parties and voting districts instead of planets electing their own representatives who have no official affiliation to anybody but the planet they represent (some voting districts are just one planet with a high population, but usually they're composed of multiple neighboring planets). Parliamentary seats are allocated based on the greatest divisor method. The head of state is the prime minister, who unlike the Federation's president actually holds a lot of power.Politics tends to concentrate on conflict of interest between parties, with members of their parties expected (though not legally required) to vote according to party lines, and on parties attempting to increase their support in order to gain more seats in elections. There's also a lot of political horse-trading to determine who gets which ministerial seat. Basically look at the government of any western country with a multi-party system and you have a basic idea how things work.
>>93432466>>93432550It's cool seeing you putting thought into such things, hope you don't burn out and get a chance to use this stuff anon.
>>93432359I've only played WH40k.
>>93432564Detail for stuff like this is fun for games because it provides levers for PCs to pull to change the situation.>>93432550A constituency as large as a planet seems totally crazy in terms of the amount of special interests and voter groups there must be, and in terms of the amount of dissatisfaction any one candidate must produce. I find that a little impractical although large-scale direct democracy is probably easier with space age technology.
>>93432513Technically they don't have a real ass at all, since they have a tail. They do have wide hips for serving as an attachment point for the muscles of said tail, though, as well as in the case of the females for childbearing (males have wider hips than the average human male, but not as wide as their females).>>93432542The Terrans are definitely the token evil guys of the system (Earth is an absolutely horrible cyberpunk dystopia). The rest have good and bad points, though Unionists tend towards the more negative side in the narrative. Autonomists are definitely the most idealistic, but that might not be the most practical since too much planetary autonomy can make running an interstellar civilization difficult.
Mars colonizations is dominated by M-7 International Alliances. It's members include:The United States of AmericaThe Union of Soviet Socialist RepublicsEuropean Space Agency (ESA), lead by France, the UK and GermanyCoalition of Communist Countries for Spaceflight (CCCS), lead by Poland and Yugoslavia JapanIndiaThe Democratic People's Republic of Korea North KoreaCanada, Brasil a d China are independent and decided not to join, preferring to focus on the Moon development and pursue their own progra.s
>>93432348IN THE BEGINNING the anciest spacefaring precursor civilization locked FTL travel behind warp gates fixed to their own arcane genetic secrets.AFTER THE FALL eugenicist space monarchies, surviving direct descendents of the ancients, control all access to transport between systems. Huge royal families and their byblows maintain, control and allow for all intersystem travel. The captain of your ship MUST be some kind of royal cousin if you're going to get through that warp gate. Their monarchies compete within themselves and against each other. Locally, well-organized and empowered systems can maintain independence from royalty - though likely still provide some nominal tribute.
>>93432625>The Terrans are definitely the token evil guys of the system (Earth is an absolutely horrible cyberpunk dystopia).You were doing so well...
>>93432550I haven't made similar infographics for the other 2 major powers, the Demosian Hierarchy and the Ni-hir Hive Collective, though the Demosian system of politics is pretty simple. They're an authoritarian state ruled by a supreme leader (the Hierarch), who appoints provincial governors who in turn appoint planetary governors (unless the Hierach overrules them, which can happen on important planets that need a governor whose loyalty is guaranteed). There is no democracy and closest to politics is people attempting to gain the favor of the provincial governor or Hierarch in order to get a good posting.The Hive Collective's system of government is...complicated, though, which is why I haven't made an infographic about it yet. On their homeworld it can basically be summed up as a pseudo-feudal system made up of alliances between individual hive-cities, with the 6 largest and most powerful ones being at the center of it (the monarchs to the feudal lords, if you will), with other cities either directly or indirectly having fealty to one, or occasionally multiple, of them. The 6 "great hives" came together to form the Hive Collective and its ruling body, the Council of Queens. They support the interests of their de-facto vassals in exchange for their loyalty. The council is lead by the High Queen, originally a rotating position between the 6 but later becoming a separate position that was intended to act as a neutral party responsible of managing things considered the responsibility and property of the whole Collective instead of any single hive-city. Over time the High Queen has gained more power, becoming the de-facto ruler of the Collective, though still needing a majority vote in the council for most decisions.Where things get extra complicated is off-world colonies. The rights to colonize a planet are handed by the High Queen, who distributes them as a way of maintaining the support of the other 6 members of the council, who run them as their fiefdoms.
>>93432564It's a setting I'm writing wargame rules for, so most of this is just background fluff. I have been thinking of writing down RPG rules as well, but I'm not sure if it would actually be worth making a homebrew system when there are already a ton of game systems out there.>>93432730The setting is intentionally leaning on classic space operate tropes, so human colonies rebelling against an oppressive dictatorship felt like a given background detail. Plus the various planets of the Federation are supposed to have different cultures and drawing from different subgenres of SF, so there's a cyberpunk planet, a more optimistic SF planet, ocean planet, planet with tons of orbital habitats, etc.
>>93432800Don't sweat it, most settings can be system-agnostic, move the fluff to the crunch you want to use.
>>93432348I have two main factions>Solar LeagueMore just an alliance, each world is fully autonomous, most are republican, but nothing prevents monarchies or even absolute monarchies from being part of the alliance. Has two military arms, the Solar Knights are like the guardians envisioned in Plato’s Republic and are fully centralized, the Solar Militia is a decentralized force organized on a planetary basis, some are willing to fight outside of their homeworld while others are purely defensive in nature.>Galactic EmpireA feudal state with an emperor on top, rule is pretty much entirely through decree and all realms are either fully autocratic or along the lines of a semi-parliamentary system with princes and other lesser nobles being forced to cede some authority to their vassals. Military is made up of nobles and levies of the non-aristocrats and are controlled via feudal contracts between nobles and their overlords.
>>93432612>A constituency as large as a planet seems totally crazy in terms of the amount of special interests and voter groups there must be, and in terms of the amount of dissatisfaction any one candidate must produce. I find that a little impractical although large-scale direct democracy is probably easier with space age technology.Probably yes. The Seiran interstellar government being kind of impractical is something I was aware of while writing, but narratively I wanted them to have a different style of democracy than the humans. Plus them being to some degree a bureaucratic hellhole is intentional, since I did want even the designated good guy factions to have their flaws. For humans it's that the focus on local autonomy allows for some planets to engage in pretty flagrant violation of human rights because they technically aren't doing anything so severe the Federal government would be required to interfere. For Seirans it's that their government is overtly bureaucratic and the scale of interstellar democracy means the average person's vote barely matters, and they have some issues with nepotism and the big parties being rather stagnant due to it being extremely difficult for any new parties to break in.They also do have separate planetary governments with their own elections, but what they can do is more constrained than what the Federation's member-states can. That can be both good and bad, depending on the situation, since it does mean all citizens are guaranteed the same basic rights, like freedom of speech and right to vote, but also means they have less autonomy and may have to abide by directives that weren't made with the local conditions in mind.
Severam kingdoms and empires, some absolutist others not so much.
>>93432359In my setting, the space mods have the power to destroy entire planets, but they generally only use their powers sparingly. This has given rise to an entire underclass of whiny planetoids who pretend to be space mods by complaining about planets they want destroyed, without having any actual ability to destroy said planets.
>>93432348Every kind of polity imaginable exists yet the greatest powers are managed or exist as byproduct of vast artifical intelligences and their infrastructure. They can vary from anarchistic self-rule to panocratic mind-ressource managements. These powers can be differentiated between the Intersophont Concordium that respects the conscious choice and the Panvirtuality that sees no issue by creating people for specific purpose. Between these powers there exist a treaty that ensures the right of all conscious beings. The powers that do not follow these rules are deemed righously dangerous.
>>93432348Tl;dr spend too much time bickering and debating they...don't actually do muchEach time a new civilisation is capable lf FTL / discovered they get invited to the galactic senate, no matter how alien, insane or else they are with not much vetting other than "you're not gonna eat the guy sat next to you aren't you?"It is composed of a speaker, then representatives of each race with a number of vote calculated on the basis of "how many of your people exist, how long has your species been added to the senate, and how stable/prosperous are you" (say you spend 24/7 of your time in civil wars and so on, we might not want to listen to you), and finally a smaller chamber which do the actual decision making after deliberation.The role of that senate is more to keep everyone in check, facilitate trading, traveling and mediate when possible to avoid wars. They do not intervene as a single body upon stellar states and very rarely pass actual laws to enforce. Being composed of everything from a single sentient mushroom which spreads over planets to manking to ex supersoldiers living peacefully in the remains of a dyson sphere, to (not) kamino "90% of our gdp is selling vat grown slaves for any use". There is always a reason for them to bicker over trade disputes, "this star system is in my borders, not yours", being ashamed X species partakes in cannibalism and so on.On the side there are "non aligned" species, mostly composed of nations either too small to matter on a galactic scale, or haven't reached FTL capabilities.There is a strict non intervention rule, no providing ftl to pre ftl civilisations, no actively seeking contact with pre ftl civilisations and of course no "liberating" them to claim ressources.Mankind itself is not a single unified planet, since many nations still exist on earth and seperate colonies. They all vote every few years for a representative of their nation who will then vote to chose whoever they send.
>>93440249>Tl;dr spend too much time bickering and debating they...don't actually do muchJust like in real life.
>>93432348>What are politics like in your space age setting?At the interplanetary level, purely around informational barter. No one is close enough to each other to visit or conquer or trade, all relations are confined to quantum telegraph communication. There is no firm authority however tenure in communication and advancement is obviously respected, and one particular race, the Elders, are the unofficial arbiter of the group, however this usually limit itself to imposing limits to technology shared with younger civilization, until they are deemed to have reached a point where they won't self destruct using it, or create a portal to the Quantum Realm and have themselves invaded by Quantum Kaijus.A Belgian lab in 2120 established contact with the Elders by accident running an experiment, the Elders proceeded to offer the usual welcome package of advanced tech, and humanity decided to build Mechs with it.
>>93432348Not great due to the lack of any kind of international forum to settle disputes and fundamentally incompatible governing philosophies between the Great Powers, of whcih there are three: the Tor'qua Hegemony, the Elai Protectorate, and the Varjren Empire.The Hegemony is the physically smallest, but also the most advanced. The Hegemony's main goal is to conquer primitive (read: pre-warp) worlds for their own good, in order to shield them from marauders and protect them from themselves, as the tor'qua believe that species wiping themselves out with nuclear weapons once they develop them is the norm rather than the exception. They want to prevent world wars, end racism, and guide the primitives to enlightenment. In practice this means they create bureaucratic police states where cultural and technological innovation is completely stagnated and any advancement outside of what the tor'qua approve, at the time and place they approve, is punished. Oh, and they're all psychic, with all the violation of privacy that that entails.The tor'qua government itself is a republic but not a democracy. A Central Committee oversees tor'qua affairs, with Premier as head of state. The Premier is selected from among the political elite and serves for a fixed term, which is about fifty Earth years.cont'd...I'm gonna be here for a while.
>>93442293The Elai Protectorate is the youngest Great Power but also potentially the most powerful. Elai are a scattered species spread across scores of worlds, some of them primitive, others technologically advanced. The elai homeworld is unknown; it might be Kortu, the capital world of the Protectorate, since elai civilizatiosn get progressively younger the further one gets from Kortu, but it definitely isn't as the elai aren't genetically related to any species on Kortu. In any event the Protectorate is the result of three of the four most powerful elai nations uniting to form a single government, combining the military might of Kortu, the industrial prowess of Senna and the mercantile reach of Rohanna, creating a new Great Power overnight. However not long after, and as a direct result of the destabilizing effects the formation of the Protectorate had, the Great War broke out and went on for 30 years, which resulted in Kortu gaining outsize power in the Protectorate. The Protectorate was supposed to be a fairly loose confederation but in practice Kortu is now the politically most dominant world, with its President as the de facto leader of the whole Protectorate and the Presidents of Senna and Rohanna respectively being reduced to a more advisory role. Even with the Great War having ended five years ago, Kortu continues to dominate due to how the war ended (the Protectorate not so much "losing" as "choosing to stop fighting", but choosing to do so before they could be invaded by join Varjren-Kyn military forces).Kortu is basically the Terran Federation from Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie). There are universal basic rights, but they don't include voting. For that you have to serve the equivalent of three Terran years in the military.
>>93442336The Varjren Empire began as the Keye Empire, the Keye being an expansionist species who spent centuries building a large stellar nation. One of the species they conquered were the varjrens, who were in the middle of what amounted to a Reformation period. With keye influence the God-Emperor of one of their nations was established as the ruler of their homeworld, allowing the God-Emperor (despite the title he's more like a Pope-Emperor, not believed to be a literal god) to impose his monotheistic religion on the whole planet, but due to varjren cultural mores the religion was often syncretized with other religions on the homeowrld, creating a religion called the Faith. The varjrens then began spreading the Faith through the Keye Empire. When the keye home star suddenly went through a violent phase that wiped out 90% of the life in the keye home system, the varjrens were uniquely positioned to move in and take over the empire. The varjrens eventually found warp routes leading to tor'qua space and elsewhere, connecting the new Varjren Empire to the rest of known space.The Varjren Empire is the physically largest of the great powers, but this is a detriment more than a help as it means it takes a very long time to cross it. As well, the varjrens are spread wide, but thin. There just aren't very many of them due to slow reproduction. As a result the Empire is very feudal in structure, with local lords having a great deal of power and leeway to act as they like as long as taxes reach the throne world of Varjra Prime. The varjrens also spread the Faith throughout the empire, syncretizing with local religions, though it's much more common for local religions to adapt tenets of the Faith rather than the Faith taking on any of their traits. The God-Emperor is a hereditary position and He possesses supreme authority in the Empire. Imperial Missions are also spread throughout Known Space attempting to spread the Faith.
>>93442412The political situation between the three Great Powers has always been tense. The varjrens rule with a light touch and mostly leave conquered worlds alone as long as they adopt the Faith and pay their taxes. The Hegemony views this as grossly irresponsible, introducing obviously incompatible cultural traits onto planets without a concern for how it might affect them, and allowing them relative freedom to technologically advance at their own pace. Even then, distance between the two and relative parity of power kept the peace.But then came the Elai Protectorate, a Great Power springing up almost literally between the two of them practically overnight. Worse, the stated goal of the Protectorate was to expand to encompass all Elai worlds - and the tor'qua and varjrens both ruled over countless elai subjects (with varying degrees of consent). The major shift in the balance of power coupled with the Protecotrate courting minor elai powers on both their borders created an innately unstable situation that eventually came to a head with the assassination by bombing of the God-Emperor of the Varjren Empire by elai separatists, which was blamed on the Protectorate.The Great War lasted for thirty years. At first it was the Empire against the Protectorate, but early in the war the Protectorate attempted to rally additional support from other elai nations along the tor'qua's borders, which resulted in the varjrens sending fleets to show the flag and threaten the nations, which resulted in the tor'qua sending fleets to watch the varjrens, which eventually devolved into a complete clusterfuck that brought the tor'qua into the war against the Protectorate and Empire both.The three-way war had a lot of shifting alliances throughout during its early days as the three great powers constantly tried to outmaneuver one another, but the last ten years saw three major events that shifted things decisively.
>>93442486The first major event was the tor'qua attempting to invade the Aitan Systems Confederation, an officially neutral elai nation that was the second-most powerful elai state after the Protectorate. The Protectorate had expected the Aitans to join the Protectorate from the start, but the Aitans ended up being fiercely independent (as a point of comparison, imagine if Prussia had formed Germany but hadn't been able to get Bavaria to join). The tor'qua were worried that the Protectorate would get the Aitans to join the war and wanted to preempt them. This ended up leading to a general breakdown in relations between the tor'qua and all of its minor power neighbors, and soon where the tor'qua had previously only been fighting a war on two fronts, they found themselves fighting a war on nearly a dozen.Thing is that the Protectorate badly miscalculated things themselves. While they obviously came to the aid of their fellow elai on Aita and helped the Aitans push the tor'qua from their space, the Protectorate decided to take advantage of the situation to conquer Aita - but the Aitans proved to be a lot more stubborn than they expected, and downright terrifying as partisans and guerilla fighters. Aita had seemed like such a nice and pleasant tropical paradise world, too, but it turned out that Aitans don't take betrayal lightly. The Protectorate might have been able to manage things if not for events elsewhere concerning the varjrens and kyn, but as it stood they ended up being pushed from Aita and found themselves facing potential Aitan invasion of some of their outer worlds.
>>93442604The second major event also involved a bad miscalculation by the tor'qua. The Varjren Empire at the time was doing very poorly and looked like it might soon fall to the Protectorate, so the tor'qua decided to launch a campaign against the Empire's rimward reaches in order to knock them out of the war. In order to do this, though, they'd have to pass through the Dethek Union's space.The dethek were insect-analogues from the planet Moraal, an extremely harsh volcanic world rich in natural resources. They were a minor power mostly concerned with shipbuilding and engineering, due to the fact that Moraal is in the path of a pair of tidally locked black holes that will eventually consume their home star system, albeit thousands of years from now. The dethek had spent centuries building an evacuation fleet so that they could abandon their home system, and often did ships on commission for other minor powers, especially the kyn. Yeah, the tor'qua didn't take into account the danger of a species with rapid reproduction and immense industrial capacity who gave absolutely zero fucks about their home system since it's all going to be destroyed anyway. They thought that the dethek were just a minor power who could be easily brushed aside if they tried to stop the tor'qua from passing through their space; instead the tor'qua found their expeditionary fleet outnumbered five to one. The tor'qua were pushed back and totally humiliated, while the dethek became the first minor power to challenge and defeat a Great Power's starfleet in open space and win - not just win, but *slaughter* them. It also brought the dethek de facto into the war on the side of the Empire, which was bad because...
>>93442671The kyn are obligate carnivores from planet Kass in the Zuraya system. They are the oldesst known species in known space, having evolved into their current form millions of years ago, but being obligate carnivores they were *extremely* slow to advance technologically. Still, they eventually managed it and built a small stellar nation for themselves, the Kyn Freeholds Union, a very losoe confederation. Aside from a brief first contact war with the dethek centuries ago, the kyn had never been at war with any other nation, but spread eagerly through known space. They are possessed of incredible spatial-temporal reasoning, reaction time, and aim. Thy often worked as mercenary pilots, and through most of the Great War had served on all sides of the conflict, all organized under the banner of the Kyn Mercenary Armada, a government-controlled mercenary corporation that served as the kyn's military arm.After a major defeat the Varjren Empire was nearly knocked out of the war by the Elai Protectorate, with Elai fleets pushing deep into varjren territory, making straight for Varjra Prime with the intent of burning the system. With the varjrens on the ropes and the tor'qua attacking their dethek allies, the Freeholds Council prematurely cancelled all mercenary contracts and ordered the mercenaries back to Kass in case it needed to be defended.When this happened, the Protectorate's advance into Imperial space stalled. Imperial intelligence learned that the Protectorate thought that the Empire might have hired the entire Mercenary Armada and needed to assass how that changed the war. The Empire hadn't...but the God-Emperor saw the benefit of doing so, and so ventured to Kass - the first God-Emperor to ever leave Imperial space - and personally negotiated with the kyn to formally bring the kyn into the war on the Empire's side against the elai.
>>93442756Between a high population, excellent and plentiful starships built by their dethek allies, and a long battlefield experience as mercenaries, the kyn made an immediate impression on the war. In particular after thirty years of war the Great Powers had essentially become specialized in fighting each other, meaning that the Protectorate was not prepared to deal with the vastly different tactics and designs of the kyn, who favored lots of smaller, lighter, more noble craft instead of huge dreadnoughts the way the Empire preferred. The fact that many kyn mercenaries had been serving in the Protectorate until recently also helped.The kyn and varjrens worked together to push the protectorate from Imperial space. Most notably the kyn engaged in the Jerikko Campaign without any support from the varjrens whatsoever. The dethek had won a battle against a small tor'qua fleet, but the kyn engaged a Great Power across an entire star system, with planetary and ship invasions, insurgent campaigns, reinforcements, etc. The kyn ended up winning Jerikko, which turned into *the* decisive battle of the Great War as securing the system gave the Empire practically a direct path to Kortu.By this point, ambassadors from the Great Powers were on the dethek homeworld of Moraal to negotiate an armistice. The varjrens were able to negotiate from a position of strength. The Moraal Accords firmly set the borders of the Great Powers, forbade the Protectorate from incorporating any new elai nations into its fold, allowed Imperial religious missions to continue (with permission from local governments), forced the tor'qua to recognize the validity of the minor powers they were surrounded by. The varjrens did have to make concessions of their own, but they basically got to claim being the closest thing to an official "winner" of the war.
>>93442871The real winners were the dethek and kyn, though. Kyn space was totally untouched by the war, and dethek space nearly so. Both "minor" powers had engaged and defeated Great Powers on their own terms, giving them immense clout in known space among their peer nations. With the Great Powers still reeling from thirty years of war, the various minor powers are beginning to flex their muscles and expand themselves.But, like I said at the start of this diatribe, things aren't exactly great. With the Great Powers weakened and focused on internal matters, the minor powers are now frequently at odds with each other. Where before a Great Power might mediate, instead brushfire wars and border skirmishes are becoming increasingly common. In addition, while the dehtek and kyn have political clout, there's feat that the two might formally unite and form a fourth Great Power, one that will be just as eager to expand and exploit as the other three (a concern that isn't wholly unwarranted - strategic depth was demonstrated as absolutely vital by the fact that the varjrens could afford to lose so much territory to an elai offensive, while the Protectorate had to surrender pretty much as soon as the kyn/varjren alliance was on their borders due to it being so much easier to get from said border to Kortu).Meanwhile, in unknown space, a fairly unremarkable planet orbiting an (admittedly huge by galactic standards) has just been accidentally discovered by mercenaries hunting a Protectorate war criminal...
>>93442293 >>93442336 >>93442412 >>93442486 >>93442604 >>93442671 >>93442756 >>93442871 >>93442932Thank you for listening to my TED Talk.
>>93442942That's a pretty cool background you got there, anon. Are the Elai a lost human offshoot? Are you using that setting for a campaign or writing your own game like the Seiran anon?
>>93442982I’ve used it for a campaign using heavily modified Star Wars d20, but it was back in the mid 2000s. I then used it as the background for the first novel-length piece of original fiction I wrote in the early 2010s (which was about those mercenaries from the end crashing to Earth…in Italy…in 1935. While the war criminal they were after crashed into Germany), published on alternatehistory.com. I’ve also been working towards staring a new campaign using it in the near future, probably using either Traveller or Stars Without Number.The elai are indeed a human offshoot, although it would be more accurate to say that they’re a cousin species - they were engineered from Neanderthals, Denisovans, and other human species 300,000 years ago, before h. sapiens evolved. Compared to human they’re a little frailer and have notably worse stamina, but with stronger senses and profoundly stronger immune systems. It’s also not a coincidence that their name is just own letter off from being “eloi”.
>>93432348Highly decentralized and varies between empires. On average however, every planet is expected to be largely self sufficient. Only paying taxes to the central government to maintain a fleet. Individual planets tend to be all over the place, though most of them are republics with at least a vague democratic governance.
>>93443089Admittedly, I haven't played SWN, but I have played Cities Without Number and Traveller, and I say that Traveller is vastly superior to the former. And that Elai lore would fit right in with Traveller, so that's the system I recommend. You ever thought about writing a setting book, or try to get your novel published?
>>93443207I’ve thought about a setting book, but I don’t have nearly the spare time th at I used to back when I was a wee lad of 15. As for publishing the novel, aside from the time issue and the fact that I was a *much* worse writer 14 years ago, there’s also the problem that it looked at the wrong way it gives off the appearance of being supportive of Fascism. The mercenaries that crashed into Italy just *did not care* about Earth politics, they just wanted to repair their ship, get their bounty, and go home. But doing that required making nice with Mussolini and strengthening Italy. Granted I took the opportunity to keep Italy and Germany far apart politically (1935 was a low point in Italian-German relations) and had the war criminal alien even kill Hitler and level Berlin towards the story’s conclusion, but nevertheless the story mostly presents Mussolini as not that bad a guy because that’s what made sense for the chosen setting, when in reality Mussolini was a *very* bad person, he just didn’t rise to genocidal dictator level.So even if I cleaned up the novel, I don’t wanna be known as the guy who wrote a story where aliens help Fascist Italy take over the world. Because while that’s not what actually happens (Italy doesn’t really end the story any stronger than it started, it just has the *potential* to become far stronger due to having been basically handed a strategy guide to tech development for the next 100 years). It’ll be what it’s known as.So I’d need to completely ground-up rewrite the novel by having the aliens crash in America or France or the UK or Australia or some place.
>>93432745Since the thread is still up, I might as well continue on this, since I ran into the character limit.The way control of off-world colonies is handled in the Hive Collective is a major source of political intrigue. In theory they, like all other assets within the Collective territory that aren't on their homeworld, are jointly owned by the Collective and managed by the High Queen in her position as the head of the Collective Council (aka. Council of Queens). In practice the High Queen will grant the other members of the Council the right to colonized and manage worlds for the Collective and take a portion of any natural resources extracted for themselves (the rest go to a collective development fund jointly managed by the council to be distributed in whatever way most benefits the Collective). The queens of the Council either have their daughters colonize the worlds or transfer the right to their vassals in exchange for their loyalty and a portion of the resources extracted. The High Queen can use the promise of giving a right to colonize a world as a carrot to gain favor of a council member, or threaten to revoke their right or force them to share the world with a rival.The aforementioned collective development fund is also used as a tool for council politics, as the High Queen controls 50 % of the shares and is able to redistribute the shares among the other members (technically she'd need over 50 % of shares in votes, but all she has to do is agree with one council member that she'll give her some of her rivals' shares to gain that majority), and does so to reward or punish them. However, since all decisions handled by the council need a majority vote to pass she has to ensure at least 3 out of 6 queens will vote as she wishes she can't alienate them too much or risk getting deadlocked by 4 of them agreeing to shoot down any proposal she makes.
>>93432348Utter shit, like IRL.
>>93434201How well compensated are these space mods for their extraneous effort?
>>93443758Long story short is that the Council of Queens is caught in a permanent political tug of war, with the High Queen on one side attempting to increase her own power, with the end goal of becoming an absolute monarch and dissolving or sidelining the rest of the council, and the six queens of the Great Hives on the other side attempting to maintain status quo or increasing their power while also simultaneously trying to benefit at their rivals' expense.If you're familiar with how the politics between the Emperor and the Great Houses in Dune, or medieval court politics, it's pretty much like that.
>>93432348Space opera adventure kind of setting. Humanity discovered the existence of crystals that allow for FTL travel. They expanded a little bit but then figured out how to use the crystals for sustainable power generation, and instead of continuing to expand and explore, most of humanity turned inward to create a core of planets living in Star Trek style utopia, but more isolationist. Humans who wanted to explore struck out to make their own way. This lead to totally unregulated megacorps that exist outside the influence of the central government, and many independent colonies with all kinds of relations between each other and the corps. There's barter and scrip, but anything worthwhile is backed by the crystals which are unable to be synthetically created and are found in scattered on many places, usually very small slivers.
>>93443847The area of space with many independent colonies bordered an area that became a warzone between an alien race and cyborgs. The conflict spilled over into the human territory, with them as a third wheel caught in the crossfire. A lot of humans ended up refugees spilling into corpo areas (ended up as indebted workers) or going into central human space and creating a refugee crisis. Human colonial defense veterans have a variety of opinions on the pains or cyborgs depending on how their particular planet was drawn into the war. The war ended with both the alien and cyborg societies being basically totally destroyed. In the current year of the setting, there is a human rush to go into the old warzone and salvage all kinds of abandoned military equipment for profit. The central human government has factions that are pushing to be less isolationist. The corpos are doing lots of shit, but one is being perfectly happy to pass refugees on to the central government to possibly destabilize it. Some of the cyborgs have started to reform as a religious cult that's looking to start another war. The aliens have gone from a military flavored democracy to something resembling a fight between backers of a full on military dictatorship (we lost the war because we lacked initiative) and those looking to expand to a full democratic movement. Lots of minor faction infighting and deal cutting with them as well.
>>93443428Eh, an Italian-centered alt-history scenario would certainly be a breath of fresh air in the ocean of Man In the High Castle "le Nazis have won!!" stories. Some extra research in the period would go a long way in making compelling characters
>>93443778It's unknown, but they're assisted by a fleet of clean-up drones that receive no compensation whatsoever.
>>93432348The only space age setting I've run is Star Trek, but I've fleshed out the Federation political system for plot reasons.Each member of the faction delegates one representative to the Federation Council, the governing legislative body. The Federation works similarly to the EU in that each member has sole authority over their own internal affairs, but there are conditions for joining and a faction can be removed if they renege on those conditions or voluntarily leave. Factions with colony planets do not get additional representatives unless those colonies are fully independent from the home world to the point where they join the Federation as a separate entity.The main political concerns internally therefore revolve around those colonies: home worlds may resist releasing control over their colony planets, who wish to have equal voice as an independent faction. At the same time some factions consider whether to game the system and have many of their colonies join independently to ensure more of a voice for their species, even if it means less power for the home world. This is by design, as it's part of the Federation's own process for bringing its own colony worlds into the Federation as independent members. The main reason why this came up is for a plot about how one species' colony world was agitating so badly for independence, and the home world being so stubborn in refusing, that it risked causing a full blown war of independence. While it would mean the species would be temporarily suspended, both sides in the conflict saw it as "means to an end" and it was the players' jobs to help find a peaceful solution to the diplomatic crisis (and stop the Romulans who were dicking around, as Romulans do).
>>93443758That size disparity is very troublesome to the "good" faction. You implied that they lost this Demosian War, but how were they not completely conquered?
space politics are too fucking retarded, only one that came close to making sense was in gundam.
Politics are divided in 3 main archetypes.1. Might is right.>These are your imperial space colonizers who conquer and genocide. Their main goal is infinite growth, and their politicians are your typical evil late late stage capitalism- and world economic forum scum. They are burning through planets fast and dominate the galaxy. Negotiations always fail, but they are done for show anyway.2. gay space communism>these are your typical brainrotted pseudo anarchists. they are the most tyrannical and conniving sons of bitches and their politics revolve around maximizing degeneracy and evading consequences. everyone hates them, yes even they themselves do. they gish gallop gerrymander and pivot all debates and political processes but are nonetheless extremely popular because of drugs, sex, and the allure of virtue through optics. They have no real goal except perhaps constant chaos. Negotiations always fail.3. it's fucking over>These guys are eternal doomers. Their main goal is to try to convince everyone its fucking over, and we need to build a new universe and escape to it NOW just two more weeks bro i promise its fucking OVER. Negotiations usually succeed.
>>93446977I have the full writeup is too long to easily post here (I made a fluff document to go with the homebrew rule that goes in the details about the conflict), but long story short is that the Hierarchy started the war with false assumptions, thinking it would be a short and popular war for the old Hierarch to increase his support in the military, as he was afraid his age abd the growing popularity of his son would lead to him being pressured to abdicate the throne. He assumed a portion of a single provincial fleet would steamroll the humans with no major issue.Instead the Demosian found out that after their war of independence from Earth most of the former colonies had maintained large, highly trained and motivated planetary defense forces and were extremely dedicated to defending their freedom. Initially the Hierarchy did sweep through poorly developed border worlds without issue, but when they reached more developed worlds they suddenly found themselves against millions of fanatical defenders and extremely heavy surface-to-orbit defences. Additionally the seemingly easily conquered worlds started experiencing issues with the defenders who had gone to ground during the initial invasion starting guerrilla campaigns against the invaders.The Hierarchy could have won by throwing so many troops in the meat grinder that they would overwhelm the humans with sheer numbers, but much of their military capacity was tied to defending their other borders and keeping conquered alien species in line. They were still making slow progress and would have won eventually, when the Ni-hir, the Hierarchy's main rivals, started supplying the humans with ships and raw materials. The Hierarch was incensed and ordered an orbital bombing run against a Ni-hir border world as a warning for them to back off, but that had the exact opposite effect as it caused the Council of Queens to vote for allowing direct military actions against the Hierarchy.
>>93449189Ultimately, with the conflict threatening to escalate into a full blown war between the two superpowers, resources originally meant for the campaign against the humans needing to be redirected to defend against the Collective, and the commander of the invasion fleet failing a last-ditch attempt to end the war quickly with a surprise attack deep behind the front lines in an attempt to decapitate the human military leadership with an attack against the Federation capital, the military rallied behind the Hierarch's son who forced his father (more or less at gunpoint) to negotiate a ceasefire and abdicate the throne.
>>93432466>>93432542
>>93432348How could an interstellar empire even exist if there's no FTL?
>>93450441Depends on how exactly you define an empire and how close to speed of light you can make it. If you have relatively close by star systems and something like the Lighthuggers from Alastair Reynolds' books, which can reach extremely close to speed of light, so that travel time between systems takes a decade or so, it might be possible to have an interstellar state but it'd have to be heavily decentralized since it takes too long to travel between systems for the central government to quickly respond to anything going on outside their homeworld (FTL communication would at least let you keep up to date with what's happening between systems, but if that's also impossible then all information coming in to the capital is also decades out of date). It probably wouldn't be able to be considered an empire, more like a loose coalition of systems, or a feudal state where each planet handles their own things while paying lip service to the monarch and occasionally sends tribute as a sign of their loyalty in exchange for not having a warship fleet show up on their orbit one day because they didn't pay their taxes a decade ago.
>>93450441Biological immortality. It is far more plausible than FTL.
>>93450441https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LQU69sYd3s
>>93432348I don't have a space-age setting of my own. But if I did, it would be eclectic.
>>93432348Starship Troopers but without the IP.FTL came with it's own risks, as humanity first came into contact with the bugs. On the positive side it mostly unified humanity against a common enemy that they have no moral qualms about exterminating. On the negative side bugs are icky.
>>93447169>gay space communismLittle too on the nose for me. Any sort of evolved future would eliminate these shit bags.
